Howdy all!
I'll start off by stating two facts:
1> This is my first post
2> I'm a total Linux NooB
Now, that that's out of the way, lets get to it!
After months of investigation of WindowsMCE, and
trialing Buffalo's LinkTheater, I've finally made the
decision to leap to Linux. My goal is to use MythTV
for my whole-house content distribution over IP
system. I want to be able to have at least 3 - 6
viewing stations (using XBOX's and EPIA systems as
frontends), with at least 2 of those capable of
receiving and decoding HDTV streams. So, I need the
sanity check on my backend (no content viewing, to be
placed in my MDF (ok, is is a closet ;-) ). All I
really want to be able to do with the backend is
multichannel/source capture and store, stream recorded
and live, store photos/MP3's etc, and probably rip and
transcode.
Here is what I purchased yesterday (it was in stock,
and I was in a hurry to get started... ok, so it was
an impulse buy):
CoolerMaster Centurion 5 case
Gigabyte GA-K8NS-ultra (nForce3 Ultra chipset)
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ CPU
1 gig DDR RAM (2 512MB DIMMs)
2x 200GB 8MB cache 7200RPM WesternDigital SATA drives
Liteon 16x dual-layer DVD writer
eVGA nVidia GeForce 5500 256MB AGB video card
(overkill, but the only AGP card they had in stock...
and if this MythTV thing doesn't work out, the box
could be a decent 2nd gaming machine)
So, here I am now with all of the above put
together... and I'm not sure what to do next. My
questions are:
1. As a professed newbie, should I follow Jarod's
guide and install Fedora Core 3 ? Any 64 bit gotchas?
2. After plugging everything in, I noticed that
Gigabyte didn't have any Linux drivers for the
embedded devices. nVidia site has nForce3 and GeForce
64 bit drivers, anywhere else I should look?
3. I was originally planning to do hardware RAID0 for
the boot, system, and video buffering. Am I going to
have a driver issue again with the embedded
SiliconImage sil3512 controller? I also want to grow
the storage to at least 1TB fairly quickly, can I do
some sort of "spanning" of the disk volumes?
4. I am going to order 2 HD3000 cards, which 2
standard def cards should I use, PVR150, PVR350, or...
? Again, 64 bit issues?
5. Firewire support: I currently have a couple
Motorola 6412 DVR's through Comcast. I want to be
able change channels and capture HD streams via
Firewire. My MB has an embedded TexasInstruments
controller... driver, 64bit?
6. Was my 64 bit purchase a bad move?
Ok, thats all my questions at the moment. I am
building this system at my office and won't bring it
home until I can make sure it will register high on
the Wife Acceptance Factor. On a scale of 1 to 10, 8
is the highest achievable score ;-) All help is
greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Adam
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